UN relief chief: Peace is the greatest gift that could be given to the people of Yemen

United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, opening remarks at the High-Level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen:

  (As delivered)

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, 

Let me start by repeating the warm welcome you have just heard from the Secretary-General and our co-hosts. Thank you for coming today to support the people of Yemen. To lift the shadow, as Gabriela [Bucher] has just said.

I especially want to join in the thanks my Secretary-General gave to the Governments of Sweden and Switzerland for co-hosting this event once again here in Geneva. This is, as the Secretary-General has said, the sixth time they have done so.  

And hosting this conference we know comes on top of all kinds of advocacy, funding and other support you have provided the people of Yemen over the years. Thank you. 

But that last phrase – “over the years” – should give us all pause.  

Because the fact is, the Yemen crisis has gone on far too long, punishing millions of innocent people who didn’t want it in the first place and who deserve so much better.  

You heard the harrowing figures from the Secretary-General – millions of people going hungry, forced from their homes, facing disease, rights violations and much, much more. 

But recently, as has been mentioned – amid the accumulated devastation of years of war – there have also been significant signs of progress. Small, small pieces of light.

One such sign was the truce agreed in April 2022. Many felicitations to the Prime Minister for that agreement.

Under that truce, civilian casualties and displacement fell sharply.  

Commercial cargo entered the Red Sea ports, and flights resumed from Sana’a airport. All those issues we have been wrestling for so long.

And this gave hope to millions of people.  

And of course, we know that some aspects of the truce fell short. Localized clashes in some areas, little relief for the people of Taiz, a city almost totally encircled by those front lines these many years. 

But as has been mentioned even after the truce expired last October, thanks to you, many of its key provisions remained and some even expanded, including measures – announced earlier this month by the Government of Yemen – to allow more commercial imports into the Red Sea ports. We thank you for that.

And this stirs hope.  

Intensive efforts are now under way to renew, expand and make solid that truce and help Yemen move towards peace.  

I want to pay tribute, as others have, to the tireless efforts of Hans Grundberg, the UN Special Envoy, Mr Guterres’ Special Envoy for Yemen. As I know from personal experience, his task as Special Envoy is not an easy one. There are not enough hours in his day.

I also want to welcome the extraordinary efforts of Member States – particularly in the region, but also beyond – working to find a solution. 

Peace is, as anywhere else, the greatest gift that could be given to the people of Yemen. And we may now hope that may be closer than ever.  

A second positive sign is a reduction in the number of people who need humanitarian assistance. A slight reduction, but at least going in a different direction. Over the last year, as has been mentioned, some of the worst needs have receded. We are talking about those who, in David Beasley’s phrase, are knocking on famine’s door.

As you heard the Secretary-General say, the number of people going hungry has fallen by two million, while the number of people in near-famine conditions has dropped to zero. Which is a remarkable achievement, for the Government of Yemen and in all its facets.       

This is not the success story we are used to hearing in Yemen. So what caused it?  

The massive aid operation of course played a decisive role, enabled by the generosity of donors here and around the room. On behalf of the millions of people who received that aid, we thank you.  

The truce also, of course, had a large hand in this, ushering in a period of calm that allowed people to move around freely, resume economic activities, and reduced the costs of some imports. That meant more people could look after themselves, were less reliant on aid and were able to attend to economic as well as humanitarian issues.  

And when all of that combined with a favourable agricultural season, the end result was – unusually these days – a drop in hunger. For a country that aid agencies have warned for years is indeed close to famine, that is no small feat.  

It also demonstrates very clearly for us in a very positive and constructive way that in Yemen as in other chronic crises around the world – progress is indeed possible, we have seen the way.  

There is a risk however that with progress – no matter how fragile or recent – the world may assume that things will now take care of themselves. 

They will not.  

Yemen remains a massive emergency – $4.3 billion for this year – millions of people urgently need assistance and protection.  

The aid operation in Yemen is among the most complicated in the world, with agencies constantly struggling, as has been mentioned, with access constraints and insecurity, and particularly the constraints on the freedom of movement and operation of female humanitarian workers. Not the only place in the world, but certainly an important problem.

This is why we’re here today – so the world can, through you, demonstrate its commitment to help the people of Yemen as they struggle to emerge from this terrible crisis.

This means continuing, and perhaps redoubling, the remarkable efforts under way to find a path to peace.  

It means funding the aid operation so that the programmes that helped reduce some of the worst hunger and other needs can continue.  

And it means supporting aid agencies as they work to deliver a principled response across the country, as well as to improve how agencies themselves do business – implementing recommendations from last year’s evaluation.   

Because if there is one lesson that emerged from the fragile gains we saw last year, it is this:

None of it would have been possible without the concerted efforts of the people in this room: the leaders in the region, the leaders in the Government, and the freedom of civil society in Yemen.  

I thank you.